Traditional copyright seeks to reserve all rights to the author other than those that she specifically surrenders.

Creative commons has been developed to encourage sharing of information. It has several different licences that allow sharing based on a selection of different elements:

Attribution: Content may be used and redistributed, but the original creator must be given credit for it.

NonCommercial: The content may be used and redistributed only for noncommercial purposes.

NoDerivatives: People can use and redistribute, but not modify the work.

ShareAlike: Users can use, redistribute and modify your work. But if you do modify it, any work that you produce based on these changes must have the same ShareAlike condition.

In Canada, there are over 300,000 works licensed under the Canadian Creative Commons. This Canadian licences have been customized to reflect Canadian laws, so Canadian bloggers and podcasters who use a non-Canadian CC licence should switch to a Canadian licence.

Kathi Simmons unveiled the Canadian Podcasting Legal Guide. It has been prepared by the Law and Technology group at UOttawa to provide Canadians with the basic information they need to understand the law that applies to authoring and using content for social media in Canada.

Hard copies of the guide were distributed to PAB attendees.

The Canadian Podcasting Legal Guide will be available for download form the Canadian Creative Commons site.

Michael led off his presentation by remarking that blogging had taken on increasing importance for him in the past two years: If you’d asked me this time last year, I wouldn’t have known which I’d give up – the blog or my print column. This year, I know what I’d keep. I’d keep the blog. Because of the people who read it and the interaction I can have with them.

Blogging has enabled Michael to engage a broader community in discussions of significant issues, including Access Copyright’s Captain Copyright and erstwhile Canadian Heritage Parliamentary Secretary Sam Bulte’s relationship with the traditional copyright lobby. Time after time, he has found that people would become engaged in the issues he addressed and respond to his positions. And in doing so, they would advance not only his thinking but also have potential for broader impact.

Project Cleanfeed is a good example of the potential for blogging discussions to flow over into real world impacts. Project Cleanfeed is an initiative to block access to child pornography. The idea is that the group alerts ISPs to the existence of child pornography images so that the ISPs can block access to them. Michael wrote a post that supported this initiative. This prompted about 60 comments in a few days. Not all agreed with his position. Many offered suggestions for change. Soon after his post, Michael received a call from the Director of Project Cleanfeed. And he was able to make several suggestions that flowed directly from the suggestions that came in on his blog.

This ability to have impact makes blogging highly attractive to anyone who has something to say.

So, what are the big issues that Michael is concerned about these days.

Connectivity: We need a strategy to ensure access to broadband for more Canadians. Michael noted that even a best case scenario will leave 5% of Canadians without access to broadband. At one time Canada stood at #2 in the world in access to broadband. Unfortunately, Canada’s access ranking is “sinking like a stone” and we are now around # 13.

Net Neutrality: This is fundamentally important. And it’s not just a U.S. phenomenon. It affects Canadians. The worst case scenario will come if parties like Google and Amazon decide to pay ISPs for top level service. They can afford it. The ordinary citizen can’t . And to be on the slow lane will hold back the access of those who cannot afford to pay. That will degrade the potential that many of us see in the new media. Canadians should press the government to address net neutraility at the same time it moves forward with telecom deregulation. And it’s the online community that has the opportunity and means to raise this issue.

Intermediaries: Michael recently received a legal notice relating to a comment on his site. This points to the legal protections and obligations of bloggers who allow others to comment on their blogs. In the U.S., parties that host content that is essentially not their own, are free of personal liability. In Canada, our situation is much different. The lack of clear protections creates an incentive for bloggers to delete contentious content. If we are concerned about people coming together to speak out on issues, then our legislators must advance legislation that will provide protection for people who speak out.

Copyright: Digital Rights Management (DRM) is a foundation issue. Think what will happen in a world in which we have all-digital TV that can be “locked down.” We are literally locked out of replicating the digital content for the purpose of ongoing conversation and comment. These discussions have implications beyond whatever you think about peer to peer file sharing. The U.S. already has legislation that tilts in favour of locking down content. Canada is being pressured to fall in line with this regime. Canadians should resist this pressure.

Fair dealing: The Canadian approach to fair dealing differs from that in the U.S. The current 1984/Hillary Clinton mash up would not be legal in Canada. This is another area of policy and law that requires review and updating.

One aspect of fair dealing is the right to share and distribute content that has been created by our government. The U.S. Congress has begun to distribute some content under Creative Commons licence. In Canada, the rights of sharing and republishing Crown Content – that is content that has been created by the government – are not as clear. Under current Canadian law, the Speaker of the House of Commons seems to be able to determine use on an individual basis. From the perspective of fair dealing, why should we have to ask for permission on a case by case basis to use content generated by our own government? The issue of Crown Copyright is an important issue that should be dealt with to give Canadians free access to the government-generated content that they themselves have paid for.

All in all, an interesting presentation by Canada’s leading expert in e-law. Thanks to Michael for spending an evening with the Third Monday social media meetup group.

Do you own an MP3 player? Download music or video? Are you interested in the future of copyright? Digital Rights Management (DRM)? Privacy on the Web? Are you concerned about maintaining free and open access to the Internet for all users – individuals as well as large businesses?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you won’t want to miss the next Third Monday social media meetup. Because we’ve got Michael Geist as our guest speaker.

Dr. Geist is the Canada Research Chair of Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa. He is a prolific and thought provoking blogger and a columnist on technology law issues in the Toronto Star, Ottawa Citizen, and BBC. He is a must-read for opinion leaders, policy makers and others interested in evolving our copyright and legal regimes to promote innovation in the use of the Web.

In the past year, Michael was a keynote speakers at the first mesh conference in Toronto as well as delivering the Hart House Lecture.

We’re very lucky to be able to have Michael speak to Third Monday.

So, if you’re interested in an evening of great conversation with an outstanding, thought provoking speaker, register online to attend Third Monday on March 26 with Michael Geist.

A video interview in which Chris Messina talks about BarCamp, WineCamp, CaseCamp and the spirit of sharing and collaboration. A bright, articulate guy providing information without pretence or ego. Nice.

Stop. Don’t run away. This is not about gaming google. Nick Wilson offers some practical tips for increasing traffic to your blog: better copy, making it easy for people to link to you, and by networking.

The lecture was delivered on March 30, 2006 and broadcast on TVO in late May. However, I was only able to catch up with my reading on the return flight from the IABC International Conference in Vancouver.

I’d recommend this as a must-read for anyone interested in the current copyright regime in Canada and one person’s view of how it should be reformed.

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ProPR is authored by Joseph Thornley, CEO of Thornley Fallis and 76design. Thornley Fallis helps companies and organizations build relationships with customers, clients and stakeholders by integrating social media with public relations, creative design and word of mouth communications.